


midnight in the garden (good, and evil)

by sure sure (getoffmysheets)



Series: Red in Tooth and Claw [13]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Assisted Suicide, Daemons, Dark, Disturbing Themes, Everybody Dies, Everybody Lives, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Gen, Horror, Poor Eleven | Jane Hopper, Psychological Trauma, This Might Be Meta, Unethical Experimentation, how much louder can i yell I Love Jonathan Byers?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22142323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getoffmysheets/pseuds/sure%20sure
Summary: There is almost something familiar in her, this little girl.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington, Eleven | Jane Hopper & Everyone, Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler, Joyce Byers/Jim "Chief" Hopper
Series: Red in Tooth and Claw [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1508453
Comments: 35
Kudos: 169





	1. strangers in a strange land

**Author's Note:**

> somebody's probably done some variation of this before, but i'm gonna go have nightmares forever, bye now!

" _Our minds are born festering with sin. Some are so blighted, they will never find redemption. The mind must be **pulled up** from the roots. My children are _without _blame,_ without _fault, and_ without _choice. For what is the value of will, when the **spirit** is found wanting_?"

-Elizabeth Comstock, _Bioshock Infinite: "The Value of Choice"  
_

At the Wheeler’s house, there was a brand new Nintendo in the basement, which gave Jonathan two good excuses to be there, even though it made Will complain (half-heartedly). “I’ve spent the night before, it’s no big deal.”

“You were dressing as a boy before,” Jonathan says placidly, holding out an arm so that Ithunna can wind around him. “Being a girl means that you don’t get to spend the night alone in a room full of boys.”

“Would you be here if I were El?” she challenges, assuming that he’d say ‘no’, because Eleven, naturally, could take care of herself.

“Yes,” he assures immediately, and glances up at her. He looks worried. “It’s easy to get carried away when you don’t know what you’re doing or how far you’re willing to go.”

“Go where?” Will asks, confused. “We’ve never gotten carried away – I mean, we stay up pretty late, but it’s not like we’re doing drugs, Jon.”

“Uh-huh,” he says patiently.

Does Will really not notice that Mike’s eyes are always glued to her legs when she wears a new dress? She started shaving just after school started and Mike practically squirms when she enters a room. He and El never really got back together after that disastrous week of the 4th of July, and Mike is probably the one the most comfortable with Will’s final transformation, outside of the family.

_(“So, Will’s gonna have this new stealth ability where during the school day, she looks like a boy, but she’s always a girl.”_

_Lucas blinks. “Cool. Roll for Deception.”_

_He and Will high-five.)_

Anyway, Jonathan is trading off player positions in Super Mario Brothers – Will and Dustin have already fallen asleep among the scattering of pillows on the floor. Will’s head is resting on one of Jonathan’s legs, and she nearly breaks his nose when she bursts up from full sleep to fully awake, panting harshly. “Eleven,” she gasps. “Call Mom and Hop! We need to help Eleven!”

\---

“Yeah, yeah, of course we’ll help you look for her,” Steve says, yanking his pants on and rummaging in the pants to make sure his keys were still there. “Let me get Billy up and we’ll…”

“Steve?” Joyce calls, worried. “Steven, are you still there?”

Bile rises in his throat. The guestroom Billy stays in usually has a small lamp on the side table turned on whether Billy is awake or asleep. Most people who know anything about the Upside Down don’t like the dark. It gives Steve the perfect view of his empty bed, the sheets half ripped from the mattress, like whoever got out of the bed did so in a hell of a hurry.

“Mrs. Byers, I think it took Billy, too.”

\---

“Why are you so sure this is where it would’ve gone?” Max asks from the back seat, nervously cradling Pal in her arms.

“Where else would it go?” Hopper asks grimly, turning into the lab complex. “There’s nothing else of it left in our world, except the original gate El made by accident.”

Steve squeezes her hand. Behind them, Jonathan was tearing ass through the woods in the car Mike got for his birthday – supposedly, it was the car he would learn to drive in, but since he was barely fifteen, he wasn’t allowed to have a license for another year.

On Steve’s other side, Robin taps her fingers on the car door. “Why do you think it didn’t take Will, if it took Billy and Eleven?”

Joyce hesitates before posing that very question to Will over the walkie talkie. “Honey, do you know why it wanted Billy and El?”

“It doesn’t feel the same as it did before,” she admits, breathing heavily over the static. “I think that it’s gotten weaker. But I’m not sure what it’s trying to do.”

  
“Whatever it is, we’ll stop it,” Steve promises Max, looking just as grim as Hopper.

Back down in the lab, Brigantia is standing exactly where she had three months ago, holding open the portal, probably so that the Mindflayer could come through in their place when the time came.

“Brigantia?” Andy asks uncertainly, trying to look into her chalky face.

“ **Finish it** ,” she says, without meeting her gaze. Her eyes, rather than being their natural brown, are black. “ **Finish. He**.”

“Finish what?” Joyce asks cautiously, circling a little closer. “What are you and Billy supposed to be finishing, baby?”

“ **Finish it** ,” Brigantia repeats.

The whole group, now united with the rest of the Party, complete with Jonathan and Nancy, jumps when something moves within the membrane of the portal, and Max is the first one to gasp “Freyja!”

“Help me!” the cougar pleads with them hoarsely. “Help, I cannot make him _listen_ to me! He won’t hear me!”

Hopper looks very reluctant to leave Brigantia alone there. “Anyone who is not legally an adult needs to keep their ass on this side of the gate.” Max opens her mouth to protest and Hop says “No ifs, ands, or buts. If-if something goes wrong-if something happens to El, we’re going to be stuck in there, and we’ll need someone to contact Owens to try and get us out. That’s your job, is that clear?”

It’s only after a chorus of “yes, sir” that he turns back to the gate and they all enter into the living nightmare that is the Upside Down.

Freyja leads them back in through the darkened mass of broken building, vine-choked ground and twisted trees. The cougar is panting, open-mouthed, despite the chill in the air. Steve is concerned but doesn’t feel right addressing her directly, so Artie asks, “Are you and Billy hurt?”

“It isn’t like the last time,” she whimpers. “Last time, it felt like we were…sleeping, almost. Except that it was hurting us. It doesn’t hurt that way anymore, but I can’t make Billy stop, I can’t make him listen to me.”

“Do you know what it wants them for?” Andy asks, her and Sindri’s faces both tense and anxious.

“I know that Eleven and Brigantia were brought here to open the gates, I’m not sure why it wanted us,” she admits.

“Nancy,” Celestis murmurs from above. “Does this look familiar to you?”

“Oh,” Steve says, feeling sicker and sicker as they keep walking on.

Jonathan stops to stare into the distance. Far sight is difficult in the Upside Down, with the dim lighting and the fog – but there’s a break in the fog ahead, a deep hole of space in the ground. He swallows. “That hole up there – it’s a collapsed building. That’s where Nance and Steve found Freyja standing with Billy’s body.”

Low and frightened, Freyja admits “I think they’re there now. I don’t-I don’t really remember being here, but Billy is…”

Her eyes widen mid-sentence, Freyja’s teeth showing as her mouth drops in shock. She bolts off into the darkness, silvery pelt flashing through the trees. Artemis and Steve go racing after her, Artie crying, “Wait! Valfreyja, _where are you going_?!”

“TO STOP HIM!” Freyja screams, and Steve’s feet pound into the broken ground, arms and legs pumping. Behind them, they can hear the others trying to follow, Joyce pleading with him to _slow down_ , but have to keep up, they don’t want to lose Freyja’s trail.

The trees break apart, and Steve’s heart launches into his throat as they slide down the crumbling slope into the broken pit of earth where Billy and Freyja were found – and beyond, beyond the pile of rubble Steve and Jonathan pulled his body from. They didn’t go this far before. Freyja is heading for the opposite side of the crater, where there are many more remains of buildings and actual structures, piles of cement blocks and broken down walls crumbling into the sinkhole.

There’s an especially large pile of rebar and loose rubble that’s been stacked too neatly to be natural, but Steve doesn’t even realize the significance of it until Freyja barrels through an opening in the crater he doesn’t remember seeing there before. It’s a hallway, he discovers. A wide, half caved in hall lined with cracked white subway tiling, and he knows that Billy and El are standing at the end, because Freya screams “STOP!! WILLIAM, STOP!!!”

But he doesn’t understand what he’s seeing, he doesn’t understand what’s happening – Eleven stands, staring blankly at the opposite wall like an automaton on standby while Billy kneels on the ground, holding something.

And it’s only when Steve realizes that Billy is not holding an object, he is holding a body. No, not holding.

_Choking_.

He’s choking a body on the floor, partially buried within this long abandoned place and Steve is not confident about much of Billy Hargrove’s opinion on things, but he’s absolutely sure he wouldn’t wanna be responsible for ending one more person’s life. He tackles Billy, pulling his arms away from their neck despite Billy’s attempts at struggling.

Whatever controls him isn’t doing a great job – it’s far too easy for Steve to subdue him. He’s not a pushover, but he knows from experience that Billy is stronger than him if he puts effort into it.

Eleven, through the force of whatever has a hold on her and Billy, pulls at Steve’s arms, whining: “ **Finish. He. Finish! Finish**!”

“Finish what?!” Steve demands, as the other catch up to them. Robin grabs one of Billy’s arms just as he tries to escape his hold, helping Steve to keep him pinned against the wall. “What does it want?”

Then Eleven says, still blank: “ **Kill me**.”

The adults all flinch, particularly Hopper, who is attempting to kneel down and check on Billy’s victim, a skeletal figure laying on its side that they could nearly mistake for a Demodog if it weren’t so small and didn’t have such short limbs. Hopper turns them onto their side and stays frozen to the spot, staring in horror, though Steve doesn’t know why – at least whoever they are has a human face, no matter how thin and gray it is.

Eleven does not let up. “ **Kill me. Kill me** ,” she repeats, more insist this time, more energized, like the thing inside her has realized that using El to speak has an effect on them – “ **Kill me! Kill me**!” becoming less monotone each moment, until El is screaming it in a passionate fury: “ **KILL ME! KILL ME**!”

Except that Hopper is no longer reacting, face drained of all color and Jonathan, unable to stand it anymore, covers her mouth, overpowering her despite her struggling. Joyce, wildly pulled between what is happening with her children and whatever has happened to Hopper, says “Hop?”

Andy whines and paws at the ground, snapping at the air the way she only does when they’re truly agitated. “…what they did to you,” she sobs, scratching and digging at the ground. “Joyce, look what they’ve done to our poor pup!”

And Sindri chitters, hands fisted in her hair as they realize what they’re seeing. “Joyce…” he croaks, shuddering hard at her back. Her knees feel weak and she feels herself sink to the door, covering her mouth to hold in the nausea. “Joyce!”

Maybe she possesses no daemon. Maybe she is skeletal. Maybe she is gray, skin broken by dark veins and sheltered away from the son for god knows how long. Maybe she is lifeless as a corpse. Maybe she is a grown woman. Maybe she is half human, and half malformed creature of the Upside Down. Maybe she is as twisted and broken as the landscape around them. But none of those things really matter, because she and Hop can still recognize their daughter when they see her.

The Mindflayer is and has always been the Upside Down’s version of Eleven.

Jonathan makes a strangled off sound of grief, squeezing the girl in his arms against him protectively. Billy gasps, shaking against Steve and Robin as she releases her hold tenuous grip on Billy to hold Eleven more completely.

Perhaps this terrible and pitiful creature is no longer capable of physical speech, or perhaps she just finds it too taxing, because she uses her control of her younger self to address them. “ **Finish it,”** she commands. **“Kill me**.”

“I don’t understand,” Joyce whispers, devastated tears seeping down her face as she regards the monster her daughter came in this world. “Why did you do this? To Will? To Billy? All those people you hurt? All those people who died? Why have you done this, Eleven?”

“ **Why**?” she whispers, monotone. “ **Must. _Must_**.”

She flings herself at them, into them, a shadow.

She cannot speak to them in real full sentence, does not communicate in words. Instead, she drags them into her, pulls them down into the dark depths of her broken body and labyrinthian mind.

_011 can’t do what Papa wants her to, she doesn’t know how to do what he asks for. She is supposed to listen to people when she can’t seem them, supposed to make them listen to her when she talks without moving her lips, but she can’t do it the way Papa wants._

_He gets angry with her, and 011 is not allowed back to her room anymore. They push needles through her skin, shove them through her spine and fill 011 with things that make her body burn with pain deep in her bones. She cries and begs with Papa to make it stop, but he won’t, until 011 is screaming just to scream – because she needs to, because her body can’t bear the experience in silence. They fill her with burning and pain, and she screams and screams until her voice breaks apart and her throat fills with speckles of blood._

_They do this every single day for so, so long. More than days, more than weeks. Perhaps months or years go by. They add more things to the needles. They grow careless and Papa no longer cares about how much she hurts._

_A bad girl, a waste of his time, he calls her. That feels worse inside than anything they give her._

_011 cannot speak to anyone without her mouth, but that doesn’t mean that someone was not listening._

_She lays feverish in her restraints, burning and burning, when a cool soothing voice speaks to her, a shadow that lets her stop burning. “Don’t you want it to stop?” the shadow asks her. “Don’t you want to be free?”_

_011 doesn’t even have to think about the answer. “Yes.”_

_It fills her, fills her with darkness and it makes the burning that is wasting her bones with every breath die down to a bare ember. “We can make sure that they pay – we can make sure that they never do this to anyone again.”_

_What follows is a horror movie, but it’s a familiar one. The shadow eats their guts, turns their bodies to sludge._

_011 eats them, too, but it isn’t their bodies she’s eating. Without the pain, she can fill their minds, fill them the way the shadow filled her. She feels their anger. Their terror. Their pain._

_But what she really, really likes is their sadness._

_No, ‘like’ is the wrong word to use. She is the most comfortable with their sadness. It’s what she knows, where she feels the safest._

_It echoes back to the wells of loneliness and sorrow she feels within herself._

_When the lab is empty, the shadow slyly suggests that she go out into the town, that she should keep tasting the sorrow of the world._

_The Hawkins Chief of Police is the first person that 011 encounters in the real world. He is a rough man with a strange smell, much taller than herself._

_“Hey,” he says gruffly. He wonders why the young lady with the shaved head and no shoes is standing in the middle of the road. “Miss? You alright?”_

_He has sadness. He has LOTS of it. His daughter is dead, and he misses her every day. Maybe she can make it go away?_

_011 eats, and eats, and eats. She pulls it from him in great big chunks, the way a lion would rip into the carcass of a gazelle, until she stands in the middle of the road, and James Hopper’s corpse lays beside her, staring out into space._

_She cries there in the road, wailing at her own monstrosity. She is frightened, she is horrified – she thought maybe she could help him, she didn’t mean to do this. _

_She runs._

_“You should rest,” the shadows whisper. “Just go back home and rest your head.”_

_011 has no home, but she has a cell, a room with a bed and a pillow she can put her head upon._

_She rests, but the next time she tries to leave the lab, she can’t open the door._

_“We don’t want you to get hurt again, we don’t want you to get upset.”_

_She stays in the bed, she lets its bond to her feed her all the sorrows she can hold, an endless bottomless well of misery for her very own. She is the most comfortable there, she is used to it._

_The shadow doesn’t want her to get hurt – but more importantly, it does not want her to_ leave _, because if 011 could leave, she could stop it. Her mind is attached to it, it feeds her even as it uses her abilities to consume the town, but her physical body is independent of it._

_But 011 realizes this far too late. The shadow ravages the town, filled with defenseless unsuspecting people, but by the time she has understood that it is a thing to be stopped, her physical body has become a pathetic skeletal husk which barely contains the enormous force of her mind. She is some monstrous creation of her own making, part shadow-stuff and pain and regret. Made more of the force of despair and negative emotion than anything of flesh and bone._

_The shadow will not, cannot, let her die, so it feeds her well of misery as it lets her physical self wither away to nothing._

_011 is a helpless unwilling witness to its bloodlust, its carnage. After a time, it’s simply part of the bed of pain on which she rests. Her helplessness descends her into a state of numb acceptance. She always knows what the shadow is doing but has no effect upon its will, no matter how much her mind struggles._

_The world around her is sundered by its hunger, the shadow draining away all life and joy, until 011 looks around her and realizes that she…is entirely alone. It leaves nothing alive. Even she is no longer human in its eyes. She is part of it, and it is a part of her. She loathes the idea, but knows that it’s true._

_It fashions a body for itself, a deformed thing made from her incomplete memory of humanity and its own desires. If 011 is miserable, she is used to the misery, and there is no one left in the world that it can hurt._

_Until the girl opens the world, opens a door for the shadow to escape. The world with the animals._

_There is something familiar in her, this little girl. Something 011 almost knows, a word that sits upon the tip of her tongue, but she can’t seem to find it._

_She scares the shadow, and that much is enough to bring 011's favor. When she destroys the body it made, the shadow tries to invade the other, Will, the way it first invaded her._

_But Will understand her better than the shadows believe. Understands that she’s afraid of the light, afraid of the burning._

_It’s much more difficult for the shadow to find her a new host after that. It’s become weaker, needs her much more. 011 requires their sadness, requires their pain and misery. Her body is physically still within their world and it knows that she will need much more pain, much more misery than what was found within Will Byers._

_Billy Hargrove is a sinkhole of despair. Inside, he feels like she does – a blackhole through which no joy escapes. The shadows enjoys his anger, likes the power of his physical form, but 011 pities him. He is made of pain – it isn’t just easy for her to take hold of him, it’s too easy. Holding him within that pain takes nearly no effort for her, even if the cougar is confusing to her._

_But he is more like her than she is like the shadow. If Billy is the dog, and the shadow his master, 011 is nothing more than the choke leash wrapped around his neck. Now that the little girl has freed them from the shadow, it’s only fair that he should have his chance to choke her back._

_She does not want to be trapped here in this cold dark loneliness, abandoned to lie in her despair forever. She has wronged them, so perhaps they will take their vengeance where they can. She has nothing else to satisfy them with._

_Let it end. It’s all she’s ever wanted, her whole life. Just let it_ finally _be over._

Hopper stands quickly on shaking legs, vomiting into the broken pile of ceramic and porcelain that used to be a toilet in the long-forgotten time when this was a real room and not a tomb, a hole that the Mindflayer had shoved her into where it could keep her body alive while sparing her no comfort or care.

Joyce is sobbing in Nancy’s arms, hysterical devastated tears – it is all too easy to picture their own El suffering 011’s fate, it’s not a leap of logical at all. She can’t even recognize herself when she sees Eleven. That might be the most disturbing detail of all. 011 has forgotten what she even looked like – she couldn’t recognize her own self in El when she saw her. 

Steve holds Billy and Robin tightly, Robin sobbing silently into his shoulder while Billy shakes uncontrollably – he isn’t crying, but his face remains hidden in Steve’s other shoulder. “I got you, I got you.” It doesn’t matter which one he says it to, it’s true all the same.

Jonathan grips El’s shoulders as gently as he can. “I’ll help you,” he whispers, tears sliding steadily down his face. “Let her go. Please, let her go.”

El stumbles, confused as 011 releases her grip on her. She begins to sob as the knowledge they’ve learn slowly penetrates the haze she was kept in, and Hopper is there to enfold her. “Why? _Why_?!”

_Why was I able to escape this, and she wasn’t_?

Ithunna emerges from his sleeve as he kneels behind the body on the ground.

“Jonathan,” his mother calls weakly, dark eyes shining with fear.

He gives her only a glance before daring to touch her face lightly with his fingertips. Her skin is as cold as the air around them. “Can you hear me?”

_Yes_. Her presence is much briefer, faint as the brush of his fingers. She does not turn her head or move her neck, but her eyelids suddenly slide open. She can’t even open them fully, but Jonathan can see that they’re still brown.

He hopes that she can feel it, feel the way faith surges in him. He lays his palm against her cheek, letting it rest beside her skin. “My name is Jonathan,” he tells her, not daring to rub his thumb on her cheek. Her skin feels like paper. As massive as her powers are, her body is fragile. “And I’m your big brother.”

“I am Ithunna,” his daemon says, a hairsbreadth from her skin. “And I’m Jonathan’s daemon, his soul.”

Ithunna winds herself carefully downwards – all of her ribs are visible, and if her skin is this fragile, how delicate are her bones? They worry that pressing down even just a little too hard will crush her chest cavity. He wonders if this is how Mom felt, years ago, when Sindri touched El for the first time. He’s never felt this terrible in his life, and for a moment, he wonders if he too is going to be sick. But they are both on a mission.

If the Mindflayer fed her on sadness, let her wallow in her own misery, there is no reason he can see that she can’t be given something else.

Something like love.

Through Ithunna, Jonathan pours his love into her, like a swirl of cream to soften the bitterness of black coffee. She needs a lot. There’s an ocean of bitterness the world has stuffed in her.

Holding onto Will’s wobbling handlebars and trotting beside her until she can do it alone. Doing it again six years later, this time with El, and trying to hold in his laughter when she swears like a sailor at the bike. Will’s head on his leg as she sleeps. Playing Nintendo with the kids. Kissing Nancy under the mistletoe. The way her eyes light up when she’s especially clever. Washing the dishes beside his mother. Her proud, glowing face at his graduation, Hop clapping in the stands beside her. Will and El, and all the other kids, dancing around the fireflies in the grass out back, the moon fat and huge above them, streaming light on their shoulders. Slipping a brand new dress under Will’s pillow, because Jonathan wants her to be what _she wants_ , not what the world wants _from her_. Pushing El on a swing in the nicer park, because he can and because she doesn’t know or care that she’s too old for that.

She makes a noise, quiet and wondrous. _Is it really like that_?

“It can be,” Ithunna promises in her velvety murmur. A tear slips free of her half-closed eyes and he dabs at it with his sleeve, without abrading the skin.

Jonathan looks up at his mother. “Your turn.”


	2. where late the sweet birds sang

" _Change. That's what the people need. But sometimes I feel that all I have to offer them are blood and fire. The things they done to me...I can't forget 'em. I was Columbia's victim - and victimhood begets shame. Oh, what element of human experience is more corrosive than shame? I'm rotted from the inside out. What do I have to offer this revolution except my own dark motivations? When all is said and done, what's more important to me? The people I want to save - or those I want to murder in their beds?_ "

\- Daisy Fitzroy, _Bioshock Infinite: "The Quality of Mercy"_

“What did you do?” Joyce whispers, looking down at the young woman. Is it her imagination, or are the black veins crawling beneath her skin looking fainter? Her complexion a little less gray?

“I gave her some of my love,” her son replies, making her catch her breath. “Like you did with Sindri, when El was younger. I think…I think that the Mindflayer has poisoned her.”

Gently, Jonathan pets her hair back away from her face – unlike the little El’s shaved skull or the current El’s natural head of thick brown waves, Upside Down Eleven’s hair is thin, straight, and very brittle. Lifeless, like she is. He waits for her to meet his eyes again. “It gave you fear, and sadness, and pain. All the things that you knew, all the things that it liked.” So gently, so carefully, the way he might touch Nanna’s wings, he brushes his fingers over her temple. “Then it realized that it could make her live off that, that it could nourish her with it. But it made her so much weaker, made her more like itself. So I thought if I gave her something else, it would make her feel better.”

011, perhaps because she felt stronger or perhaps because she didn’t have a good grasp on the magnitude of her powers, projects herself into all of them now. _I don’t know why you’re doing this. I’m not worth saving._

Nancy turns her head, crying into Joyce’s shoulder. Celestis turns restless circles in the air above them.

“I told you, I’m your big brother,” he whispers. “To me, you are. And I’m not leaving you here this way. Mom, it’s your turn.”

El is still shaking beneath Hopper’s arm – it would be better if Brigantia were here to hold her as well, but Hopper makes do as Joyce kneels beside the tragic half-dead body of this hellscape’s Eleven. Lowly, he tells Jonathan “We don’t even know if she can survive being removed from here. Or if she’ll ever be able to walk or speak normally.”

“ _Anything_ is better than this,” Jonathan says, with a ferocity that anyone outside of the Byers-Hopper family would probably find shocking. “ _Anything_ has to be better than what she’s already lived through.”

Sindri delicately touches 011’s clavicles. _I don’t belong with you_ , she protests, though only weakly. _You already have your daughter, I’m not her._

“Says who?”

Well, that is a billion dollar question, isn’t it?

Her baby in a Ghostbusters costume, her stomach twisting with worry as Will and Jonathan go trick or treating. Will on a bed, first laying in the hospital, and later in a new dress, nervously staring at her with owl-eyes. Eleven sitting between her knees as she brushes through her fluffy hair. Jonathan, who has been so dependable, takes on so much responsibility and never complains because he doesn’t want his mother to suffer more, and he doesn’t want Will to start sacrificing things the way he has. Her brave little girls, facing real life monsters before they’ve even reached high school. Their little band of child-warriors, led by Steve, their unlikely and protective minder.

Holding poor Maxine’s hand as she had to walk her through the ceremony and emotional process of letting her brother’s memory be laid to rest, then holding her whole self later when she realized that her grief had been answered by the universe by her brother’s return. The terrible, amazing, painful burst of love and hope as El stumbled upon Hopper. Lying in a dark room beside him and realizing that like Max, the universe had answered her grief in the best possible way. 

Sindri pulls away when they realize that 011’s breathing is audible now, a loud strained rasp that she struggles through as she cries openly. All of the others flinch hard as she flings herself wildly outwards again. _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry_ -

“Shh, shh.” Joyce keeps her grip on one of those bony, skeletal hands. And her skin is definitely less gray now, the blackness running through her veins almost completely faded, and when Joyce brushes away her tears, she’s touching something not quite as fragile as Jonathan did even a few minutes before. It seems his theory might be correct. “It’s not your fault, do you hear me?”

Shakily, El says, “Those people – everything and everyone in this world is dead because she let him in.”

Sindri squeaks and chitters in concern, curling into her side so that he doesn’t press down on her fragile lungs.

“Of course she let him in. She was young and scared and alone, El, and they kept _hurting_ her,” Nancy murmurs. “He took advantage of her and manipulated her into trusting him, until she was just crippled enough to stop being able to fight back. She was in pain, all the time. She was miserable, and that’s exactly why he picked her, because he _loved_ it.”

And that’s exactly why, later on, she would pick Billy. Nancy doesn’t say it out loud, but her eyes dart toward where he is standing, half-supported by Steve and Robin in the opposite corner of this hellhole.

It was one thing to hear that a dead boy her age used be hit by his father sometimes, or even to hear that Billy was given custody of Max despite being legally dead because Neil had moved on to hitting her in his absence, and completely another thing to view 011’s perspective of seeing the world from his brain, through his eyes. To feel the relentless pressure of helplessness, and terror, and pain, and rage, and abandonment, and self-hatred living in his very bones.

And just as harrowing, to know that 011 picked him because living in Billy’s agony felt so comfortable and familiar that for her it was almost like breathing. The winter followed autumn, the sky was blue, she went about life in constant emotional despair. He was merely an island caught in the eye of the hurricane.

Jaw tightening, Nancy waits a moment to gather her thoughts, pulls together some ideas before coaxing Celestis to her wrist. Delicately, she lifts 011’s fingers to brush over the white feathers over Cel’s wings.

Walking in the snow at Jonathan’s side, holding his gloved hand in hers, Christmas lights still glowing on Main Street. Sitting on the sofa as her mother placed Holly gently in her arms, that strange panicky feeling of holding something so important. Holly’s eyes opening and looking up at her. Jonathan touching Cel for the first time. Steve bumping her knee with his own, lifting his eyebrows in that comical way of his and saying, “So. First anniversary with J.” and her heart just bursts by how much he’s grown, how much kindness and sympathy was hiding in him. Hopper handing her a rifle with no hesitation, and maybe even just a bit of approval. Painting El’s face for Halloween, because she wanted to be an owl just like Cel. Mike leaning into her side at Barb’s memorial…

011’s narrow chest flutters rather pathetically. Her flesh is nearly a normal color, though her hair is still thin and brittle, and her body itself remains painfully thin. _Does it usually hurt you, like this_?

“Yes,” Nancy whispers. “When it’s real. But it’s so worth it.”

When she stands, Robin hesitantly takes Nancy's place, Mithra restlessly flapping his wings as he clings to her shirt. 011's fingers are twitching uneasily. Like Nancy, Robin has been filled with a distant cold horror ever since 011 explained how she'd come to be in this place, and why. Mithra, after a little uncertain shuffling, finally just flops down to tuck himself under 011’s neck – where he normally rests while Robin sleeps.

Riding her father’s shoulders through the gates of the stadium at her first Cubs game. The way a pair of drumsticks feel beneath her fingers. Listening to Rush’s _Moving Pictures_ on her mom’s record player. Being just a little bit high and playing cards with Jon and Nance. Being just a lotta bit high and feeling safe with Steve sprawled out next to her – never feeling more like the person she really is, because he knows her and loves her and it doesn’t matter that she isn’t the way he expected her to be. The person she really is, at least for this one person in the world, is enough and Steve doesn’t even understand how beautiful and amazing that is to her. Tammy’s dark bob, the way her hair curls around her ears…

Robin startles as 011 pulls away from Mithra and only feels a brief flash before her mind tremors. _Help…help_ …

Quickly, she rolls her, dragging her chest into an upward tilt just as 011 coughs. A gooey black substance emerges from her mouth as her lungs struggle to expel more of the disgusting sludge. Robin doesn’t even know what it is – it doesn’t seem to have a smell, but it’s slick, sticky, and filled with clumps. Almost like blood clots, if any human could have blood that seems to be a mixture of oil and tar. 011 convulses and coughs, shuddering violently, but at last she seems to have gotten all of the poisonous-looking goo out of her body.

Robin presses her fingers cautiously to 011’s pulse. It’s fast, thready, and feels too weak. She can’t quite seem to stop her trembling anymore, either – almost as though her body has realized how very cold it is in the Upside Down and rejects it the way it rejected the black slime sitting in her lungs. “I don’t care which of you it is, but someone needs to warm her up right now, because I think I just trashed whatever defense acclimated her to the environment here.”

Steve doesn’t really understand any part of that sentence, other than ‘warm her up’. Though he refuses to move from Billy’s side, Artie approaches with a slow and measured stalking pace, finally cuddling her fluffy mass against 011’s scrawny, shivering form. She ends up draped over Artie’s back, the contact only causing her to shake that much harder.

Robin isn’t that surprised – Steve is made of ten percent brave stupidity and ninety percent love. She’s always been told there’s such a thing as too much of a good thing. When 011 gives an almost violent convulsion, Robin quietly urges: “Go easy on her, Art.”

At first, 011 falls.

Just falls and falls and falls through the vast seas of Steve’s devotion, before Artemis realizes that there’s no way she’ll be able to pull herself out as 011 gasps into her neck, and Artie steps in to guide her along.

_This way, kiddo, you wanna go this way_ …

Dustin, dressed in a fancy suit, hair looking fucking fabulous, nervously asking for advice about girls. Wedged between Hopper and Nancy on a picnic table as he slurped down a cherry popsicle and watched the fireworks. Talking to Jonathan in the driveway at odd hours, drinking beers and just…being. Sitting on cold bathroom tiles and stroking the fragile membranes of Mithra’s wings, strangely satisfied despite the lingering nausea. Max, pouring her heart out about her brother and letting Steve hold her, even as he was left feeling as though he’d lost something, somehow. Mrs. Byers, sweeping the hair out of his eyes – “You’re such a nice boy, Steven!”.

Distant memories of his own mother, her perfume and the way her high-heels clicked o the hallway floors. Will leaning on his shoulder as she sat in the front seat of the Beemer, sunset washing the whole town in glow of its vivid orange light. A dark room, peaceful and quiet after a day of turmoil and chaos, Pal’s fur soft in his hands, and Billy’s hands resting in Max’s flame-red hair and his eyelashes sweeping over his cheeks like artwork.

011 makes a confused noise in the back of her throat. _Why did you not kiss?...kiss him?_

Startled, Steve says aloud “Why would I do that?”

_Because you…love…?_ she murmurs, and then flashes him images – Joyce sitting on a bed in a darkened room where Hopper lay, safe but exhausted, cradling Andy’s sweet face in her hands and oh, she loves them so. Jonathan reaching up to gently brush his hand over Celestis’ feathers, and they love him so. Nancy’s eyes lighting up and Jonathan’s chest feels like it’s filled with sparkling water and he loves her so. And Steve.

Steve himself, in the dark, staring at Billy’s eyelashes and the sight of him sleeping, _breathing_ , fills him with peace the way nothing ever has before, Steve with Freyja’s weight holding him down, her purrs of contentment vibrating through his body. “ _Baby, baby, such a good baby_ ,” and he loves – he loves –

“Oh,” Steve croaks, feeling cracked right down the middle, exposed and raw as the cold wash of realization comes over him. “Oh.”

_I’m a little bit in love with Billy Hargrove._

011 is just as bewildered, it seems. _Why…why don’t you_ …

…kiss him, he mind supplies quickly, and now he’s imagining it, and he can’t stop, even though he knows that he probably shouldn’t. But Billy might not say no? Could Billy even say no? It wasn’t like he would have a lot of options out here in Hawkins, Indiana, Steve thought glumly.

_He thought about kissing a boy. He thought about it a lot_.

And Steve had known that intellectually, but he’d never made the leap into considering himself to be in that same position.

But now he’s imagining it, and he can clearly picture the exact shape and color of Billy’s lips – which should tell him all he needs to know, really. But now he wants know how those lips taste and feel, the texture of Billy’s skin under his hands- “…oh.”

He quivers as someone pulls at his shoulders and realizes that Robin is speaking to him. “-eve? Oh my god, are you alright?! Steve?!”

“…’m fine.”

“Something is happening. I think he gave her too much,” Jonathan whispers, dragging Steve away as he watches poor 011 gasping on the ground.

Golden light flickers around her, a haze of gold that makes Jonathan choke on his breath when he realizes what she’s doing.

Without anywhere to put these things, these new experiences and emotions, 011 is forcing her own daemon to manifest – or perhaps she creates it out of whole-cloth, how can they say? Jonathan and the others have no trouble believing that she is that powerful – the Mindflayer used her to _end the world_ , she’s basically a god.

Beside 011’s body, shivering on the cold rotting ground, a tiny young Eleven, naked of clothes or hair, curls her knees up to her chest and sobs, wordless and lost. Quickly stripping themselves of sweater (Steve) and coat (Jonathan), the poor little daemon girl is clothed. She is a tragic creature, a pathetic being of clammy white skin, fragile bones, and wounded eyes.

Looking at her makes Hopper want to rip something in half and Andy bays and snaps at the empty air, stopping only at the daemon girl’s flinch. Like her mistress, she possesses no tongue for speech, simply makes a wordless wail of hurt and despair while Jonathan hugs and rocks her. “You’re alright, you’re alright, I’m here.”

“Dad,” El whispers, shuddering Hopper’s arms, helpless in a way he’s never heard her before. “Dad…”

“What are we gonna do with her?” Andy whispers, pressing herself up against El’s legs.

Gently, Hopper untangles El’s limbs from him, coaxing her to curl around Joyce and Sindri. The girl daemon goes totally still in Jonathan’s arms as he approaches 011 for the time, her chin ducked and her eyes down.

While she may look a little healthier, a little less like an abomination of the Upside Down, she is still a skeletal, fragile woman, nearly half dead and shivering in the dirt.

Their eyes meet and 011 gives another especially violent shudder, fingers twitching helplessly as she grasps at nothing.

Looking at her is maybe the most difficult thing James Hopper has ever had to see in his life of difficult sights. War, murder, Ghost Children, Brigantia, Will’s lifeless body, Sara…

_Please_ , 011 whispers to him, closing her eyes as she turns her head away. _I don’t want it to hurt, if you…if you can..._

She thinks he’s going to kill her.

“Do you really think I could hurt anything that has your face?” he asks, breath hitching as he lifts her body quite easily – too easily – into his arms. Apart from a sharp whimper as her legs are pulled free of the rubble in what is likely to be literal years, 011 does not fight this process.

To that, she replies with a flash of that other Hopper, before the Upside Down became what it was, asking if she was alright. (Foolish. He knew she wasn’t)

Her implication is clear _: I killed you_.

Despite the many horrors she’s witnessed, that seems to be the one that’s stuck with 011 the longest. The one death, he realizes, that she herself was directly responsible for. James Hopper was only person 011 had ever killed, and she’d done it by accident. Because she wanted to help him.

“Am I supposed to kill her?” he murmurs, jerking his chin at El. “She’s killed dozens of people. They were bad people, people who were trying to hurt a child. But she knew what she was doing. You killed one man, and didn’t mean to.” After a thoughtful pause, he added “And I’m sure he thought it was a mercy, too.”

Joyce hiccups out a sob, hugging El to her and shaking her head sharply in denial. “No, not me, sweetheart. You’re stuck with me.” He holds a hand to 011’s clammy face. “And so are you, kiddo. No matter where you go, you’re my daughter. Sorry, but you aren’t getting rid of me that easily.”

A single tear slips free of her left eye and she uses her pitiful strength to press her face to his shirt. Hopper acknowledges that this is probably the last argument he’s gonna win for the next four to eight years.

Worth it.

“I’m Eleven,” El tells her older self stubbornly. “Mom and Dad can find you a new name.”

_…011?_ she asks, with a subtle twitch of her wrist.

“No,” Andy tells her gently, as she told El and Brigantia “You are not a number.”

Joyce and Hopper look at each other as he stands, bones cracking from his kneeling position, lifting her away from this dead land. They could call her ‘Jane’, but she has never met Terry Ives, and the reality of her existence is so far from the hopes any mother would have for her child. As poorly as ‘Jane’ fit El, it seems an even more inappropriate title for 011.

Jonathan suddenly says, “Lily.”

“Oh,” Joyce says, charmed. “Do you like that?”

_Alright_ , Lily replies, because Jonathan knows that she can hear the part he hasn’t said out loud.

Quickly, he moves to follow Hopper when the little girl daemon makes a sound of quiet distress. Apparently, unlike El and Brigantia, they do not have the ability to stretch their bond apart. Jonathan squeezes her closer to himself and lengthens his strides to keep closer to Hopper. _We dug you up from the dirt and now we’re going to bring you home_.

Beside Jonathan, with quiet authority, Andraste tells the daemon, “Cartimandua.”

Incapable or unwilling to create speech, the daemon makes an inquiring noise, dark eyes peeking out from the edge of Jonathan’s shoulder. 

“I am going to name you for one of the most cunning rulers in the ancient world,” Andraste says solemnly, head held high. “Cartimandua, Queen of the Brigantes.”

Maybe she doesn’t look like much, maybe she doesn’t seem like a queen yet, but Andy knows that she will. Someday, she will.

\---

Steve’s entire body feels electrified, twitchy with unspent energy, even though it’s very late at night – nearly morning to be honest.

He wants so badly to touch Billy, and not just because of the revelation that 0 – that _Lily_ caused him to have. He can’t shake Lily’s memories of inhabiting Billy’s mind, the strength and physical power of him even while stewing in the blind terror and gut-clenching anxiety that he lived in every day – the perfect conditions for a young woman who was all too comfortable living in misery. Trained by the Mindflayer to _need_ it, in a way, though Steve still didn’t quite understand how she could survive without eating or drinking or going to the bathroom like a normal human for all these years.

He wants to hold, to comfort, and he’s so angry with himself, because in the time before that realization, Steve probably would’ve dared to at least _get closer_ to Billy, to at least offer him some kind of comfort, even if he knew it wasn’t likely to be accepted. But now he feels…he feels creepy, predatory, like any interaction he has with Billy is tainted now, because part of him still wants to kiss him (or maybe more than kiss him?). Any attempt to console Billy would feel dirty to him – _Steve_ feels dirty, and not in a nice fun way.

Luckily, Max has been glued to his side ever since they came back through the portal of the Upside Down. She barely had the attention to spare for Nancy’s story about who and what Lily was, she was so relieved to have Billy back. Since their confrontation with Neil, her favorite place is at his side – and Billy seems far from bothered by it.

But that leaves Steve caught between a confusing muddle of emotions. He wants to touch Billy, wants him to feel real and alive, even as the idea of touching him makes Steve feel slimy and gross because no matter how innocent even the smallest of touches would be, it wouldn’t really be innocent, not to Steve. He wants more than innocent, more than friendly.

(He’s never had this problem with Robin before, never hesitated to hug her or just sit beside her, and oh god, now he knows **_why_** ).

And he _knows_ that Billy’s upset, even if he’s being totally calm and normal for Max’s sake – Freyja hasn’t stopped purring since Lily let go of her mind control of Billy, her whole chest vibrating in an attempt to soothe themselves.

Artemis would like to go to her, but they both know that she won’t leave Steve while he still feels this miserable.

Billy, meanwhile, is trying to figure out what that hellion did to Steve as he coaxes Maxine and Pallas back to bed.

Artie, normally so cool and calm and dignified, turns anxious circles and gives an occasional whine as Steve idly wanders around, mostly pretending to clean things. Her tail is drooping, her ears have dropped. Occasionally, one of his hands will reflexively reach to grab a handful of her patchwork fur before letting her go just as quickly, as though he’s been burned by an invisible force.

Billy wishes that he or Freyja had just a little more courage, wishes that she was not still just a bit too shy to approach the dog daemon on her own.

Or so he thought. 

Freyja lashes her tail, hindquarters wriggling, his only warning before she pounces on Artie - _literally_ pounces, leaping on the dog's back and closing her jaws around the scruff of her neck. In any other daemon, that would result in a snarl and bared teeth but Steve is so soft and so _good_ that Billy is barely surprised when Artie just goes limp in her jaws. He'd pay real actual money to hear him make that keening sound again though - without being cut off next time. "Billy-"

"I dont know what her plan is any more than you do," he admits. "Freyja, she isn't a chew toy-"

"She isn't hurting me," Artemis murmurs, still relaxed as Freyja begins to walk toward the bedroom, despite Steve's gasping breaths. 

He's good at disguising it, but Billy can see how tired and fragile he looks, just now, and all he wants is to wrap him up in his arms and hold him down on a bed until he will **rest.** Freyja knows - of course she knows - and she tries to work his will by dragging Artie (and therefore Steve) to bed. 

"I-I can make her stop," he offers uncertainly, hesitant because Billy doesn't _want_ to stop her but that's better than whatever nonconsensual attempt at caretaking Freyja's decided to engage in. 

_"I_ could make her stop," Artemis points out, which is true. In that sweet voice Billy now recognizes as her flirting with them, she adds "Maybe we enjoy letting you take care of us."

_"Artie,"_ Steve says, almost a whimper for how weak and pained it sounds, shocked by her (seemingly) uncharacteristic behavior. 

"He wants a hug," she says, with an uncomfortably direct stare at Billy. Then adds, almost a plea, "Please."

He can see Steve, can see that he will try to deny it, maybe brush it off or joke about it, but Billy doesn't think that Artemis would lie to him. And why would Billy refuse to take the opportunity to do what he wants to do so badly? 

Steve feels warm and human and solid against him, and the moment Billy moves to hold him, any resistance he may have given leaves him, folding like a cheap card table as his head rests down on Billy's shoulder. (Like he was made to be there, like they were made perfectly to have Steve's cheek resting on his shoulder and Billy's nose at his pulse.)

"You were in so much pain!" Steve sobs, and Billy knew that part of Steve felt something for him but this was the first time Billy _believed_ it, the first time his eyes had seen proof, and it was because the reality of Billy's painful life had brought him to tears. "She chose you because you were so sad, you were in so much pain!"

"I was. But it doesn't hurt like that anymore," he says honestly, and dared to touch and stroke his hair. "Don't cry, Steve, c'mon."

Steve scoffed, wiping his eyes, "Wasn't it you who called me a princess?"

"Nah," Billy says fondly. "Now I think you're more like a knight."

He grinned at the vivid blush coloring Steve's pale cheeks. "My white knight," he teases, "Charging in to save me."

"Course," Steve clears his throat, still blushing. "I have to."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story basically illustrates my theory that the Upside Down is basically El's "bad ending", answering the question "what happens if she never gets away from Martin Brenner?" 
> 
> Finally! Finally Steve realizes that he has a romantic connection to Billy!


End file.
